Not much at all

I hope everyone in the areas of extreme heat is safe and managing ok.

I don’t have anything really coherent. Last week was that sort of week.

Last Monday night I developed a fever. I’m double vaxed but felt like I had a cold – which pointed to the Delta variant possibly. Cancelled German session for Tuesday (by the end of that day I actually felt ok and I’ve been studying hard), got me some covid tests. Result was negative. Onward we go.

I’ve gone off most of the foods I’ve been tending to eat. The idea was making me slightly nauseous. So, had a think and got in some things I haven’t had in a while/loads of fruit and appetite seems to be settling. A lot of peaches/apricots/nectarines; farm shop sausages to be oven-baked and then thrown into other things (like eggs); ready made gluten free granola because I’m bored with the stuff I’ve been making myself; endless permutations of peppers (red, yellow, orange, stripy ones).

Dreams have been weird and unsettling. Woke in the middle of the night last Wednesday, went downstairs to check on the dog (for no good reason really – he was fine) and noticed that even at around 2 AM it wasn’t full dark out – rather, the sky was an almost neon deep grey. We’re the same latitude as Montreal so don’t get white nights. Nothing is regular. Nothing at all.

I think I’m actually just weary and irritable from the past year, need some time off (and someone else to do the cooking), and need the weather to turn here (ie, we finally have a bit of proper summer).

At least a load of books I’ve been looking forward to have started to appear on my doorstep. I finished the latest John Connolly in the Charlie Parker series (The Nameless Ones). Really well done. Managed to find a used version of a David Lindsey I’d read decades ago and am in the midst of that. A few other things should drop week after next.

What a friend calls house porn magazines are helping a bit. I can trawl back and forth through each month’s Elle Décor, Living Etc and World of Interiors and lose myself a bit/think about trying to do something outrageously expensive on the cheap. Each subscription was a gift so I don’t even feel guilty about receiving all three of them on a monthly basis.

The garden is a madness due to all the rain. The strawberry persists in sending out runners faster than I can find ways to peg them down.

One of the dahlias is in bloom. There’s a blue salvia doing things (the buds are black – at first I wondered if it had gone over due to too much rain). I have some quite unusual and fetching sweet peas (ie, not pink). See pics of all peppered around this post.

Another thing I’ve been doing to distract myself is driving through the tree tunnels to the common and back home. The tunnels look even more ancient than the oaks growing in the Devon banks and pull me out of myself (another pic – not here but gives an idea).

I’m hoping things smooth out this week.

How about you? Are you on even keel or feeling twitchy/wiggly/irritable?